WAR WITH TRIBESMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1001, 18 June 1930, Page 11

WAR WITH TRIBESMEN

TROOPS AND PLANES ACTIVE IN INDIA CLEAN-UP OF AFRIDIS British Official Wireless Reed. noon. RUGBY, Tuesday. j The Government of India issued an j appreciation of the situation in India j for the week ending June 7. It is stated the Afridi situation j overshadowed everything else during the week and at one time events threatened to assume a very serious complexion. A lashkar, led by Said Badshah and other prominent Mullors, is known to have formed three weeks ago near the western end of Khajuri Plain. Subsequently further concentrations witn standards collected in the upper . Bara and began to move slowly toward the Peshawar district border. By June 4 the lashkar had reached a point about 15 miles west of Bara ; fort. Its reported intention was to hold a jirga with the Khalil and Mohmand tribes of the district, with a view to combined resistance to alleged Government oppression. On the night of June 4 the lashkar entered Peshawar district and numerous isolated gangs, some of them numbering several hundreds, penetrated the Khalil and Mohmand villages up to the cantonment to attack the cantonment, but this did not eventuate. A large part of the lashkar appears thereupon to have retired westward toward the hills. Numerous gangs, however, remained scattered through the Khalil and Mohmand country and in gardens south of Peshawar city. Trees were felled and culverts destroyed on the Peshawar- ; Bara road. HEAVY CASUALTIES I On the morning of June 5 parties i retiring across Khajuri Plain were ; bombed from the air, and the Royal I Air Force is repored to have inflicted | heavy casualties. i Simultaneously a moveable column | marched out from Peshawar to clear \ the country between Bara and Kohat | Road. j The drive was entirely successful ! and troops are reported -to have inflicted severe casualties. Details of the losses suffered by the Government forces are not yet available, but a few casualties, as was inevitable in operations of this sort, are reported to have occurred. A careful search was conducted on June 6, but failed to discover any Afridi stragglers in British territory, and the entire lashkar appears to have withdrawn from the district. A message from Bombay says the police arrested 51 Congress volunteers who were picketing European stores in a big shopping quarter of the city.

The streets were filled with menacing crowds demonstrating their sympathy with those arrested. , Troops kept order.